AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Directions to Starbucks,” I told my phone.
“Starting route to…Starbucks,” my phone replied. “Head northwest along concourse three.”
Northwest?
“Fuck me,” I muttered.
I was wracking my brain for another bright idea that didn’t involve me walking aimlessly, when I learned that Austrians didn’t stand by and watch dumb blind guys flail helplessly without doing something about it.
An older man’s voice addressed me. “Was brauchen Sie?”
“Uh…the elevators?”
“You are American?”
“American,” I agreed.
“What you need? Baggage?”
“Yes, baggage claim. If you could tell me where—?”
“Ja, okay. Kommen.”
He took me by the arm and tugged me.
“Wait, sorry. If you could just tell me where to go…?”
“Eh?”
I could picture the guy blinking at me like I was some kind of moron for resisting his help. And he was right. It was quite obvious that my rule about not asking for help had to die a swift death. Before I even left the airport. It just wasn’t possible to do this without help, and it wasn’t likegettinghelp would make this trip a walk in the park.
I mentally modified Rule #3: Ask for help without suffering a kick to my pride every damn time.
Respectfully—I hoped—I angled out of his grasp and took the crook of his arm instead. I smiled in his general direction. “Better like this.”
“Okay, gut,” he said, and I felt him shrug.
We walked about ten paces before the man stopped and said, “Rolltreppe.” A nano-second later I learned that was German forescalator. I nearly lost my balance trying to find the downward rolling step, and my heart dropped somewhere to the vicinity of my balls as I clutched at the railing.
“Es tut mir Leid. Langsamer,” the man said. “Uh, slower? I go slower.”
If you don’t fucking mind…Humiliation burned my neck. Langsamer, I thought. I’d have to remember that one.
We took two escalators down to the main concourse, and then the airport’s size swelled to even greater heights and widths. Evidently the baggage claim was roughly six hundred miles away, as we walked for ages in this loud, crowded, cavernous mini-city, where the sounds bounced up and down, all around, each one amplified and multiplied to infinite numbers. The smells of coffee and hot food came and went, and while I’d have killed for a strong coffee, stopping was out of the question. My guide was on a mission, and I was too freaked by the unknowable enormity of the airport to do anything but be led.
Finally, we arrived at the baggage claim; I heard the trundle of suitcases, the whirr of conveyor machines that spat out luggage, and voices. Hundreds of them. The place was packed, and the reality of how unprepared I was hit me again like a lead weight. So many contingencies I hadn’t even considered. Like how to know which baggage wheel was mine, or which fucking bag to grab as they went by. The old anger flared, like sneering laughter.
“Die Airline?” the man asked.
“Uh, Austrian,” I said. “From New York City.”
“New York…the Yankees, eh?”
“Yep.”
“Kommen.”
My guide tugged me through from one morass of people to another. “Here. I go. Ich bin spät.” I felt him pat my arm, his voice was heavy with concern. “Viel Glück, junger Mann.”
